All the famed Blue Ridge music styles are here--bluegrass, ballads, blues, gospel, and old-time string band music. Special 2017 music workshops include A Buffet of Banjo Styles and Songs and Ballads I Learned From My Grandmother. The BRFF's renowned crafts area is alive with tradition as festival artisans--many of them selling their wares--demonstrate longstanding rural hand skills picked up from family and neighbors. On the storytelling stage beside a working still, retired bootleggers and revenuers swap grand stories of their past cat-and-mouse games.

Called "thoroughly authentic" by the New York Times, the Blue Ridge Folklife Festival offers an unmatched day of rural entertainment and heritage.